In this gripping account of one of the most pivotal times in U.S. history, Pulitzer Prize finalist Gregg Jones captures America's high-spirited drive for empire at the dawn of the 20th century, culminating in the conquest of a fledgling Asian republic. At the center of the story stands the dynamic Theodore Roosevelt, who pressures a reluctant President William McKinley into a war to expel the last European army from the New World—a clash that vaults America to world power and thrusts the nation into its own imperial drama in the Philippines. Jones's vivid narrative recalls the military triumphs and painful missteps in the country's beginnings as a major power, and resurrects such unforgettable characters as the cold but brilliant Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and his aging foil, Senator George Frisbie Hoar; Mark Twain, whose outraged writings on America's conquest of the Philippines were censored by his own publisher; and frail Stephen Crane, who braved Spanish bullets to document the heroism of U.S. Marines at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.